


The House of Shade and Clocks

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Illustrated
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-07-13
Updated: 2011-07-17
Packaged: 2017-10-21 08:57:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miss Kanaya Maryam arrives at the estate of the good Doctor to serve as governess to his unruly ward, Rose Lalonde. Though her employer is courteous, and her student intriguing, there is something distinctly wrong in the house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which Our Heroine arrives at the peculiar abode of her new employer, suffers an unpalatable meal and encounters a troublesome pupil.

**Author's Note:**

> With apologies to the gothic novel in general, and Clive Barker's _Thief Of Always_ in particular.

An avenue of slender trees led to the entrance of the estate, their white trunks casting bands of soft shadow across the path. The house itself crouched beneath the sky like a waiting tiger. Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, the air had a balmy warmth, and carried a scent of hothouse lilies, but our heroine could not restrain herself from shivering a little as she grasped the cold iron doorknocker. It was rendered in the shape of a cat's head, she noticed, its too-numerous eyes composed of flecks of jade.

At length, the door opened with the requisite torturous creak. Kanaya banished all thoughts of sinister deeds, forcing herself to wonder instead what careless housekeeper could let the hinges go ungreased. As she wondered, a hunched and silent footman beckoned her inside, his oddly-shaped face obscured by a hat of peculiar shape and colour. Within the house, the darkness was cloying and absolute, and Kanaya felt the old longing for her sunlit homeland return.

The footman lit a lamp, whose dull and flickering light served - as is only appropriate in such a tale as this - to delineate the lowering shape and substance of the oppressive darkness.

"Now, take heart, young lady," she said to herself, "You are scarcely trepidacious by nature, and you have faced worse things than darkness."

She followed another hobbling retainer down a seeming endless series of corridors and galleries, until they arrived at another door. It was similar in design to the first, though the doorknocker here was a simple sphere, enamelled spotlessly white. It looked all too much like a plucked eyeball for Kanaya to be quite comfortable with it, but she swallowed her objections and knocked. It was opened, with impeccable promptness, by a tall, pale fellow in an immaculate suit.

"Miss Maryam," said the man, "A delight. Do please sit down."

His voice was low and courteous, with a suggestion of cultured sleekness. Kanaya did as she was bidden, and tried to give her host an appropriate smile - polite, yet confident - but it was difficult to look at him directly. When one caught sight of his face from the corner of one's eye, it was impossible to forget his countenance, but when one's focus slipped inevitably away, it was impossible to remember. Having tried a few times to meet his gaze, Kanaya was left with the following impressions: that he was a handsome man in the prime of life, that he was nonetheless bald and beardless, and that she would pay any amount of money to look on him no longer. From then on she stared at her hands, which remained clasped in her lap.

"Let me assure you, Miss Maryam, of my gratitude for your prompt arrival and superlative references. I have been searching for a governess for some time.

"Not at all, sir, it is an honour," she said, as she knew she must.

"There is little hope for my son, I regret," he said, "David grows more weak-minded and wilful with every passing day. My daughter, however, might respond fruitfully to a little sensitive instruction."

Kanaya nodded, taking the opportunity to glance around the room. It was lit by a single chandelier, eight small flames illuminating the writing desk, the new-fangled typewriter, and the green wallpaper, which bore a pattern of such riotous efflorescence that Kanaya would not have been surprised to hear the lonely cries of jungle birds.

"You will instruct Rose in all appropriate arts for a young lady: chronotaxis, non-Euclidean architecture, paradox cosmology, and the care and breeding of amphibians. I suspect you will find her recalcitrant and disobedient pupil. However, your letters of recommendation from Lady Serket suggest that the handling of such obstinacy will be well within your capabilities."

"I hope to help as much as I may," said Kanaya.

"All that remains is to instruct you in the ways of the house," he said, "We are an ancient family and our ways often appear peculiar to those of inferior blood."

"I did suspect as much, sir."

"You may roam wherever you wish within the grounds and the first three floors. I must ask, however, that you do not stray into the upper reaches of the house, nor into the cellarage. You will take your meals in the small dining room, alone. The family eats in our private quarters, which are also barred to you."

"That is understood, sir. Is there anything else?"

"Should the question arise, I would request that you do nothing to encourage Rose's interest in astrology and astronomy."

"You need not worry, sir, I must confess that I do at times struggle to recall which is which," said Kanaya, risking a witticism.

"The difference, in this house, approaches the infinitesimal. Have you any other questions?"

"Since you ask, I do wonder if perhaps the judicious application of the occasional lamp might render your home more easily navigable by newcomers."

"You make the error of assuming that to be a desirable state of affairs, Miss Maryam. Please wait here, my manservant will show you to your room."

* * *

The house was almost as shadowy by morning as by night. The small dining room proved to be every bit as chilly and draughty as Kanaya's own quarters, draped with forest-green hangings like every other room in the house. Yet another small servant in an outlandish hat had arrived that morning to deliver a perfectly-tailored green suit for Kanaya to wear. While she was the first to admit that green was her colour, and that the embroidered waistcoat was absolutely the most dashing thing, she found it unsettling. It gave the appearance that the house was eating her alive. Still, it would have been unwise to disappoint her employer, so she had donned the suit and made her way to the dining room for breakfast.

To her extreme perturbation, "breakfast" consisted of ham and eggs, both dyed a vivid green. She toyed with them for some minutes, waiting for her hunger to overcome that part of her which baulked at pork products of such verdancy, before becoming aware that she was no longer alone in the room.

A girl sat at the other end of the table, a small creature, only a little younger than Kanaya herself. She was pale and slim as the milky stalk of a dandelion, with a pointed chin, a severe brow, and large dark eyes which regarded Kanaya with amused skepticism. She, too, was dressed in green, a full-skirted gown which struck Kanaya as more appropriate for an evening soiree than the breakfast table.

"It is customary, I understand, to introduce oneself to one's breakfast partner," said Kanaya, feeling rather put out that the little madam had observed her for so long without her notice.

"Please do forgive my inexcusable behaviour," said the girl, in tones of cool, clear insincerity.

"Were it inexcusable, it should hardly be morally correct for me to forgive."

"I suspect, however, that you would be capable of doing so," said the girl.

"I regret that my character is so transparently evident from the manner in which I wield my cutlery and examine my admittedly disquieting breakfast."

"On the contrary, you are most enigmatic," she said, with an infuriating smile.

"A condition to which we all aspire, it seems. I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Lalonde."

"Well played," said the girl, "And you are Kanaya Maryam, appointed by my guardian to coax me into the avenues of compliance and malleability, no doubt?"

"I was under the impression that the good doctor was your father."

"He may be, for all I know," said Rose, "I was raised by my mother, until recently."

Shocked by this impropriety, Kanaya held her tongue.

"Oh dear," said Rose, "I see I have wounded your delicate sensibilities."

"Not at all," said Kanaya, though she could not deny that a faint blush had suffused her cheeks, "I merely marvel at your readiness to flaunt such infelicitous circumstances of birth."

"Dear me," said Rose, "I do hope to be able to witness your first meeting with the head gardener. Or, indeed, my dear brother."

"I assure you, Miss Lalonde, that the doings and sayings of coarse men and young rakes retain little power to amaze me."

"I look forward to an exhibition of this resolute unflappability, Miss Maryam," said Rose, getting to her feet with a rustle of emerald satin, "Until then, I shall leave you to your breakfast."

She departed, leaving Kanaya feeling decidedly shaken, her mind humming with sly retorts and barbed insinuations. She had anticipated that the young Miss Lalonde would be sulky and monosyllabic at best. This was a marvellous improvement.

Thus cheered, she managed to get through three or four mouthfuls of the unfortunate breakfast - all of which had the taste and consistency of stewed leeks, regardless of appearance - before returning to her room to prepare for a spot of exploration. It seemed an auspicious day for investigations, and she had not forgotten the true reason for her arrival at the house of Doctor Scratch.


	2. A Wolf In The Piano

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Our Heroine receives a mysterious letter and conducts further exploration of the house.

  


Kanaya's exploration of the house proved an amiable diversion for a young woman possessed of a lively intellect and a propensity for reflective isolation. While by no means averse to company, her upbringing had left her with plentiful resources for solitude. It was with a light heart and lighter step, then, that she traversed the labyrinth of the lower house. Despite her enthusiasm, her findings were uninspiring: a maze of dim green landings, lined with locked doors and winding staircases that led nowhere; a Bluebeard's castle of disappointment. Moreover, the house was a veritable desert: Doctor Scratch had made no appearance since their meeting of the previous night, and his wards were equally elusive. The occasional glimpse of a servant in a multicoloured cap was the only evidence that the house was inhabited at all.

By the luncheon hour, Kanaya had charted all three floors to which she was permitted access, but that which she sought was nowhere to be found. It was clear she would have to broaden her search to the grounds, and the forbidden regions.Still, she had not expected her quest to be easily accomplished, and there were many days to come.

A luncheon dish was waiting for her on a tray in the small dining room; mercifully, it contained only a quantity of plain green salad. The relative palatability of her meal was small comfort, however, given the emptiness of the room. She had rather hoped that the young Miss Lalonde might make another appearance.

In actual fact, she did not see the other girl until that afternoon's lesson. Both Rose and a young man were waiting in the schoolroom when Kanaya arrived, the latter a pallid, spindly creature whom she took to be the infamous David. The resemblance between the two was startling: paper-white hair, dark eyes, and elegant green apparel. David's gaze, however, was qualitatively different from Rose's. Though both had a habit of fixing the unwary with a deep and unblinking stare, David's was an admixture of guarded curiosity, fierce defensiveness and ostentatious boredom. It was, in short, a look which sought a response. Rose, on the other hand, merely observed, betraying nothing. Kanaya also noticed with some amusement that the boy wore a pair of emerald-lensed aviator's goggles around his neck. A harmless affectation, though one which reminded her with a small pang of Lady Serket's daughter and her endless nautical hats.

The two were apt if unforthcoming pupils. Kanaya felt a trifle absurd attempting to educate them - they were scarcely a year younger than she was, for heaven's sake - but if they found the situation equally ridiculous, they made no remark upon it, and when the tower bell chimed the dinner hour, they packed up their books and left in silence.

All of Kanaya's earlier good mood was gone, for reasons she could not quite explain, and she made her return to the dining room with all the unappealing prospect of another lacklustre meal eaten alone. The silver dish on the table seemed to mock her with her own reflection, and for the first time since arriving at the house, she felt loneliness bubbling up around her, like a bathtub slowly filling with cold water. The dish itself contained nothing but a hard-shelled green pomegranate, sliced in half to reveal a compound eye of glistening seeds. She chewed on a few of the seeds, allowing herself a moment of self-pity. Almost as soon as she began to feel that she had wallowed enough, she noticed an envelope, wedged under the dish but protruding at its corner. The envelope proved to contain a note, inscribed in violet ink. Kanaya smiled a little at the exquisite penmanship before beginning to read.

> Miss Maryam,
> 
> My apologies for what will inevitably prove a very brief message. Necessity compels me to abandon the ceremony of the appropriate salutations and well-wishes, and proceed to the crux of the matter. I am consoled by the fact that your imagination - doubtless nimble as it is - may here fabricate the requisite half-page of enquiries after your health, and assurances of my own welfare. I'm sure you understand that a civilised person could never in good conscience inflict a missive from my dear brother upon their most contemptible adversary, and that it is thus with the deepest regret that I consign to you the following epigram:
> 
>  _Sister - to the roof. At once. Bring the governess._
> 
> If I may be so bold to make the suggestion, let us carry out this plan of action and initiate the said course of events. We shall meet you there. I wish you good luck, though good sense may prove more advantageous, if anything does.
> 
> Rose Lalonde.

It was momentarily difficult for Kanaya to restrain herself from an unladylike agitation. She stood up, clasped the letter to her bosom, walked to the window, gazed unseeing at the grounds, and remained motionless for some moments before stumbling back to her chair.

"Now, this simply will not do," she said to herself, "What has got into you, Kanaya?"

She slipped the letter into the inner breast pocket of her suit, for reasons opaque even to herself, and smoothed down her lapels.

The first matter to consider was that of access to the roof. It seemed likely that this would require passage through the forbidden fourth floor and the attic, and as such it was best to depart immediately, while the family was still at dinner. She wondered what they might be eating. Jewel-like green grapes, perhaps. Mint sherbets in crystal goblets. Aged veridian wines. A brief image fluttered across her mind's eye - Rose Lalonde sipping blood-dark wine from a silver chalice - and dispersed into a haze like absinthe fumes. She needed to concentrate.

The way to the fourth floor was via a sweeping double staircase, but it was guarded night and day by a pair of green-skinned custodians with selachian fangs and blank aggression in their white eyes. There was, however, a dumbwaiter shaft leading up from a third-floor pantry. The dumbwaiter itself was too small for even a girl of such dainty proportions as Kanaya, but she thought she might be able to scramble up the cute itself into whatever chambers lay beyond. This proved easier said than done. The thought that the cut-glass syntax of Rose's letter might mask some terrible emergency - some pressing need for assistance which only a kindly governess coud provide - did prove an excellent motivation, but it was a cramped and torturous climb nonetheless. Still, she emerged onto the next floor with the barest minimum damage done to her coiffure and her dignity.

The dumbwaiter shaft gave onto a small study or drawing-room, furnished in all the very worst excesses of fashionable taste. Where the floor was not cluttered with miniature octagonal side-tables, it was burdened with a vase of flowering ferns or a squashily-upholstered footstool. Every surface was laden with small inlaid boxes of sweets or hair-ribbons or goodness-knows-what. Kanaya had the apprehension that this was probably not the private room of the young Miss Lalonde. It was, at least, uninhabited. Kanaya had the vaguest of ideas that she perhaps ought to search the room while she was there, but what exactly she might be looking for, and to what purpose, she had not a clue.

From here it was merely a matter of finding some way up to the attic. The audacity of her mission only now began to impress itself upon her, and the chattering voices of self-doubt began their gibbering in the back of her mind. Kanaya subdued them with an imperious wave and the distant memory of victory over an unconquerable foe. She did not recall the nature of the victory, nor the treasured allies with whom she had claimed it, but the elusive recollection warmed her a little, like the dying embers of a cooling bonfire.

She found herself in a service passageway, pleasantly free of houseplants and useless small tables. At its end, between two linen cupboards, a precarious ladder stretched upwards. Her heart pounding, she darted towards it, then came to a halt. From above, she heard the sound of a piano. The melody was measured and circuitous, rising and falling inexorably, like the lap of waves. Whoever sat at the keys was an accomplished and tireless player. There was another sound beneath the music, one which scratched at a door in the depths of Kanaya's memory, but the door remained locked, and the sound soon slipped from the grasp of her recall.

She shinned ably up the ladder, emerging into a room unlike any other in the house. The walls and ceiling were painted a vivid red, and in the center of the floor a girl sat at a grand piano, her fingers running of the keys as gently as water.

It was not Rose. It was nobody Kanaya recognised, though she was forced to admit that her powers of recognition seemed to be fading, these days. The girl at the piano was dressed all in red, the same red as the walls of the room, with the scarlet hood of some fairytale heroine pulled up over a mass of dark, wavy hair. She neither looked nor turned as Kanaya crept across the room, her gaze fixed on the sheet music before her. An open door stood at the far end of the room, revealing a dark hallway beyond, but before Kanaya got halfway towards it, there came another sound.

A low growl of hunger and menace shuddered through the room, and Kanaya felt a wave of bone-deep fear rush over her, turning her legs weak and heavy. Then there came a sound like the desperate scratching of claws, and the paint on the wall and ceiling was riven by three deep scars, as though torn by invisible talons. Kanaya whimpered. Red paint began to seep like blood into the claw-marks, healing over the tear, but the growl continued and the paint split in a hundred more places, shredded by the rage of an unseen beast.

Then the girl at the piano spoke, without ceasing her music for even a moment.

"Kanaya, you must go. The wolf cannot harm you while I hold him in check. All will be well."

"Aradia?" said Kanaya. The name coursed through her mind and fell away, like a raindrop running down a leaf, and she remembered it no more.

"Go," said the girl, "Folly is often the surest path to knowledge."

For one brief blessed moment Kanaya found she could move, freed of the terror, and she fled from the red room as though the hound of hell pursued her.

  



	3. Crow's Nest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heroine enjoys a spot of embroidery.

At the end of the corridor, a narrow staircase rose into further darkness. Far from being unsettling, this proved a relief to Kanaya's eyes after the searing red of the wolf room. Already, though, the memory began to dull and soften, the terror and confusion ebbing away with every step. The stairway rose to an absurd height, a steeply pointed nautilus of dark wood and ragged green wallpaper. Kanaya was quite out of breath when she reached the top.

"Perhaps I ought to have issued some forewarning regarding the stairs," said a familiar, crystalline voice behind her. Rose Lalonde was standing a few feet from the top of the stairwell, at the centre of a small wooden platform affixed to the apex of the roof like the crow's-nest of a pirate ship. This impression was enhanced by the presence of a brass telescope affixed to one of the rails, its singular sea-green eye focused on some distant galaxy - if galaxies there were. Night had fallen, turning everything violet, but not a single star was to be seen in the sky.

"Not at all," said Kanaya.

"It is a peculiarity of idiom that one might refer to it as a flight of stairs," said Rose, without looking round, "That rather implies the possibility of escape."

Kanaya suspected that most conversations with her pupil involved swordplay of a sort, but this was an unexpected move. Wordplay or playful refutation seemed quite inappropriate, and she had every expectation that sympathy would freeze in the air between them.

"May I ask why your brother summoned us here?" said Kanaya.

"In truth I was rather hoping that might be the subject of a future lesson," said Rose, "The fathoming of the multifoliate opacities of the Strider psyche. For beginners."

"I find it difficult in the extreme to imagine your suffering any hardship in penetrating anybody's character."

"Five minutes' dialogue and the topic of conversation has already strayed to penetration? Miss Maryam, I must have you on my couch some day."

Kanaya blinked.

"Psychoanalysis is the very newest and most healthful pursuit for girls, after all. No doubt that slight greening in your cheek is a mere flush of approval regarding my intellectual endeavours in the field. But for now, may I suggest… embroidery?"

It was impossible to deny that the house of Doctor Scratch was a place of subtle and perplexing enigmas. The most impressively cryptic of these mysteries was the precise method by which Miss Lalonde managed to make the word "embroidery" sound so thoroughly unsuitable for young ladies, while still giving the impression that her entire soul was constructed from ice and glass. Kanaya would have felt quite faint, were faintness not the province of the heroine of an improper novel.

There was a small hollow in the centre of the crow's-nest, filled with cushions and sewing-baskets and textbooks of unnatural history, and this proved a suitable hideaway for two small seamstresses. Kanaya noticed with interest that Rose had been working on a large design, worked in gold and purple thread: two glittering palaces which bore up their spires to the sky like frost on a windowpane. At first the sight of them merely tugged on the edges of Kanaya's consciousness, a rush of yearning without source, as of cities glimpsed in dreams. It was some minutes before she remembered the true nature of the cities, of the dreams, of the real reason for her presence.

"Do you remember, too?" she said.

"I remember many things, Miss Maryam," said Rose, picking up another leaf of linen and driving her needle through it with a quality of modulated aggression which made Kanaya's heart perform an unmannerly pirouette.

"I dare say we have reached the point at which you may dispense with the formalities, Rose, and I say this as a person with a certain fondness for formality."

Rose did not look up at her. The needle moved like a minnow in her hands.

"Very well, Miss Lalonde," said Kanaya. Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps Rose did not remember her or the others, despite all the distance she had travelled and all the dangers she had faced down. No good deed goes unpunished, she reflected, and to her immense shame felt tears prickle at the corner of her eyes. She refused to cry. She would get them both out, whether Rose came to her senses or not.

At length she felt a cool hand brush her wrist, and a piece of soft fabric was pressed into her palm. She unfolded it, revealing a row of hastily-stitched letters.

 _The telescope. It's not safe to talk._

Kanaya nodded and slipped the scrap of fabric into her pocket, nestled against the letter from earlier, before making her way over to the device. It was an object of marvellous workmanship, rendered in brass with inlays of gold and shimmering dials, and a polished plate affixed to the barrel bore the inscription "Skyglass of the Seer." She knelt and peered through the eyepiece, and at first felt nothing but disappointment. The sky beyond swirled with unnamable colours, but it was still nothing but the sky. As her eye began to adjust, however, she saw that the surface of the heavens was crawling with life: life of a horrifying and inhuman intricacy, life of an unmistakeably horrorterrifying and woegothic variety, but life nonetheless. As she looked, she felt a thousand thousand eyes turn their scrutiny upon her, eyes multifaceted and glinting like blood-blisters.

"They have come looking for me," said Rose quietly, "On a clear night such as this, one may look upon them and remember."

"We are observed from all angles, then," said Kanaya.

Rose shook her head. "In this instance I regard their Squamous Majesties as allies, or something of that nature. They do at least provide certain countermeasures against the House. We may speak freely under their gaze."

"Feferi's lusus was only debatably malevolent, I suppose," said Kanaya.

"Questionable malignity is the nearest substitute for friendship in this place," said Rose, "Present company excepted."

"Too kind."

"I have made a note to shower you with gratitude once we make good our escape," she said, "Until then we have some extremely definite maleficence to deal with."

"Doc Scratch?" said Kanaya, "I… knew him. Long ago."

"I too have suffered the dubious pleasure of his acquaintance," said Rose, "The creature downstairs is not him. This is a house of simulacra. Bewitching and realistic images, drawn from our own recollections, but unreal things nonetheless. I thought initially that you were another such counterfeit, forged to lull me into a contented imprisonment."

"What of Dave?"

"Dave is real. We were led astray together. But the house holds him more firmly in its grasp, and he rarely knows himself. Perhaps he has forgotten altogether that he called us here. If you're feeling particularly meddlesome you could try searching for him."

Before Kanaya could respond, the slow passage of a cloud across the sky occluded the eye of the telescope, and Rose stepped back suddenly, as though slapped in the face.

"Miss Maryam, I regret that I must leave. We can but hope to have some chance of survival without whatever startling intelligence my brother had intended to convey."

She reached out and clasped Kanaya's hand once in hers, before darting away down the stairs, the green of her dress swirling like grass bending before a breeze.


End file.
